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And this is about personal connections in life and business, not amassing massive numbers of Twitter followers.

These kinds of links are what prompted Stratten to speak to a Niagara College marketing class about employment and social media.

Stratten is the author of three best-selling business books, president of UnMarketing and an international keynote speaker.

He offered to visit the class through Twitter after he saw students Tweeting about receiving a copy in class of his publication The Book of Business Awesome.

One was an image of the class hoisting their books, in another they flashed him the rock-n-roll hand gesture.

The Oakville native offered through Twitter to talk to the class— and this week he did, loaded with boxes of donuts.

Stratten spoke at the Niagara-on-the-Lake campus about his human resources background and teaching stint at Sheridan College.

"Application of knowledge," and building connections with people like your professors and instructors is key, Stratton told the students.

"The students that stood out, were the students that stood out," he said, adding landing jobs is more about establishing useful relationships with people who might hire you, than in firing off resumes.

Stratten— with more than 161,000 Twitter followers — spoke passionately about balancing social media and online life. This, after being prompted by Niagara College students concerned by its overwhelming nature.

He said on Twitter, his solution is to actively follow a smaller number of people in a list, and this keeps communications more manageable.

He adds family and personal life lived face-to-face must take priority over constant smartphone use.

"I love tech… I built a business around the explosion of this industry, so I owe so much to it — and despise a lot of it," Stratten told the students.

"We don't have to be so connected all the time. When you're hyper-connected you're not connected at all.

"I have 2,000 friends on Facebook, I know five people," he said. "I used to have 4,000 friends and culled it down, one at a time, to 2,000."

Student Greg Seymour, reacting to Stratten's talk, praised its "really good insights" in an interview.